HDMI cables at Best Buy

Electronics stores often don't make much profit off TVs and video game consoles. So to balance out the big items, most retailers mark up smaller items that many people use, like HDMI cables (which allow you to stream content from your laptop to a TV).

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Apple iPhones

Thomson Reuters

Cost to make an iPhone 6s Plus: $236

Price you pay: $749

As CNBC notes, the decreasing cost of many iPhone components and smartphone market dominance helps Apple's profitability from iPhones.

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Verizon and AT&T text messages

Getty Images/Sean Gallup

Cost for most phone carriers to send one text: Three-tenths of a cent

Price you pay per text: $0.20 on average (without an unlimited plan)

By making pay-as-you-go plans expensive, carriers like Verizon and AT&T can herd customers into longterm, multi-year plans, the Chicago Tribune notes.

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Hallmark greeting cards

High-grade paper (to distinguish greeting cards from something you could print from a home computer) and labor costs from making Hallmark cards in the USA lead to the outrageous price hikes. As the Atlantic notes, consumers are also least sensitive to products' prices when they're trying to convey a sentimental message (like you do with greeting cards).

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True Religion designer jeans

True Religion's jeans are made in the USA, where manufacturing costs are much higher compared to overseas. The price mark-up also covers designer brands' huge marketing budgets, and the costs of running stores, headquarters, shipping, and other overhead, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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TI-83 graphing calculators.

Texas Instruments, the manufacturer of the TI-83 calculator, has retained a monopoly in the field of American mathematics, allowing it to charge a lot for its products. Textbooks, like ones made by Pearson, often feature illustrations and exercises that pair with TI-83s, so students are forced to buy them.

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College textbooks

The giant mark-up for college textbooks largely comes from author royalties, editorial production, marketing, transportation, and the cost to pay employees at bookstores. According to The College Board, the average student spends upwards of $1200 per year on textbooks.

HP printer cartridges

Electronics manufacturers like HP are able to sell you inexpensive printers (which they make little profit from), because they know you will pay a premium for ink. In a Computer World story from 2010, HP also argued that it spends a billion dollars each year on ink research and development.

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Wine at Olive Garden

You pay a lot more for wine bottles when you eat out (at Olive Garden as an example), because of each restaurant's operational costs. Each state also has its own alcohol laws and taxes that can affect the price of wine.

Aquafina and Dasani bottled water from convenience stores

It takes the profit of about five bottles of water to make the plastic for one bottle of water, a partial reason for the heavy price mark-up. The price hike also comes from Coca-Cola and Pepsi's (the manufacturers of Aquafina and Dasani) marketing and distribution costs.

Prescription eyeglasses from Luxottica

The Italian eyewear firm Luxottica (which owns Ray-Ban, Sunglass Hut, and LensCrafters) retains a big chunk of the market, meaning it has little competition and can determine price mark-ups.

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Roses

Getty Images/Rick Gershon

Wholesale cost for a dozen roses: About $9.50

Price you pay: $20 to $60, depending if you buy them from a grocery store or florist

The US imports over 80% of its roses (primarily from Colombia and Ecuador), according to the Society of American Florists. They are only in demand a few times a year and need to be carefully transported with air-conditioning, which largely accounts for the high mark-up. For example, on Valentine's Day, the price of roses spike can anywhere from 30% to 50%.

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Lattés

Shutterstock

Cost to make a small latte: About $1

Price you pay: $3

Depending on where you go, the mark-up price for coffee and espresso is about 300% at coffee shops. This is because you're not only paying for the drink itself, but t he experience of drinking it at the coffee shop. Rent and labor costs are also factored in.

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Sofas (and other furniture)

Luxury sofas cost more because you are paying for the vision of the designer. Even $10,000 high-end sofas do not cost more than $2,000 to make, according to The New York Times. That's why you might often see furniture stores marking the prices back down — to give the illusion of a huge sale.

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Mattresses

Gene Kim

Cost to make a mattress: Anywhere from $75 to $150

Price you pay: $200 to $4,000, depending on the brand

Materials for manufacturing mattresses are cheap, and the cost to make a mattress is usually around $100 no matter the price you pay. There are also just a few companies (e.g. Serta, Simmons, and Tempur-Pedic) that have a monopoly on the industry, making it hard to comparison-shop.

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EpiPens

EpiPens each hold about $1 worth of Epinephrine, the medicine that combats allergies, though Mylan Pharmaceuticals hiked the price of an EpiPen two-pack from $57 to around $600 in August, since the company doesn't have much generic competition. The device also only lasts between six months and a year before it must be replaced.

After Mylan was swarmed with controversy over the price hike, it announced in mid-December that it will launch a generic version of EpiPens for half the price ($300).